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Crowdsourcing: A Definition

I like to use two definitions for crowdsourcing:

The White Paper Version: Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.

The Soundbyte Version: The application of Open Source principles to fields outside of software.

The Rise of Crowdsourcing

Read the original article about crowdsourcing, published in the June, 2006 issue of Wired Magazine.

December 16, 2008

The Best Application of Crowdsourcing You Didn't Know About

Occasionally—just occasionally—I gloat. Shortly after writing the original Wired article on crowdsourcing, I predicted that the GPS navigation systems like those produced by TomTom and Garmin would eventually put their own customers to work improving their maps. This bit of prognostication didn't make it into my book, but I was happy to discover a TomTom executive attending a workshop on crowdsourcing I gave in Rotterdam a few months ago. Earlier this year the company launched a feature it calls MapShare, in which the TomTom user community collectively acts to provide updates and fixes to the map.

Today, a trademag covering the "sat-nav" industry ( a lovely British locution, that) notes that users have now made 5 million corrections. “To put this five million milestone in perspective: a one-hour trip
made anywhere in Europe or North America will be influenced by twenty
to thirty Map Share corrections,” said Corinne Vigreux, managing
director TomTom.

Below, a graph charting growth of the MapShare community vis a vis growth of TomTom's user base generally:

The real interesting thing about this move from TomTom is that they "trusted" the crowd to help influence their product while business is going well versus a desperate move to stay alive. I liken this example to Gold Corp who went to crowdsourcing as a last resort and it ended up paying off http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/content/feb2007/id20070201_774736.htm
However if business was going well for Gold Corp I would guess that they would have been unlikely to turn to crowdsourcing as a foundation for growth.

From a market perspective this would appear to be the furtherance of a trend that crowdsourcing should be the cornerstone of growth for companies versus the last gasp of air. The problem that the world faces is that that companies must first move out of the "cone-of-silence" and trust the crowd to help grow their business.

Jeff, I've read your blog articles with some interest and am really excited about recent crowdsourcing innovations, TomTom certainly being one of them. I've just written a blog piece about parallels between crowdsourcing and the Baha'i administrative system (bet you're like: "huh?!") Check it out!

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